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BRUCE KIRKLAND, QMI Agency

Jul 22, 2014

, Last Updated: 3:59 PM ET

The 39th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival has chosen its closing night gala, along with 59 other feature films that were officially announced on Tuesday, but there is still no opening night gala to brag about.

That was the surprise twist as TIFF co-directors Piers Handling and Cameron Bailey unveiled an impressive slate of high-profile pictures for its gala and special presentations programs from Sept. 4 through 14. The star-studded titles include Canadian icon David Cronenberg's Maps to the Stars, his Hollywood satire that triumphed at Cannes with Julianne Moore winning as best actress.

Among other major announcements are: Antoine Fuqua's The Equalizer, a Hollywood thriller starring Denzel Washington; Bennett Miller's Foxcatcher, a true-life drama starring Steve Carell and Channing Tatum; Mike Binder's Black and White, a racially charged drama starring Kevin Costner; David Dobkin's The Judge, a courtroom struggle co-starring box-office champ Robert Downey Jr. and the ageless Robert Duvall; Michael R. Roskam's The Drop, a gangster movie with the late James Gandolfini in a featured role; Philippe Falardeau's The Good Lie, an inspirational drama about Sudanese migrants starring Reese Witherspoon as the American who helps them; Edward Zwick's Pawn Sacrifice, a Cold War chess match story with Tobey Maguire as Bobby Fischer and Liev Schreiber as Boris Spassky; Mike Leigh's Mr. Turner, with Timothy Spall as the celebrated British painter; Chris Rock's Top Five, the story of a comedian turned movie star co-starring Rock and Rosario Dawson; and Jean-Marc Vallee's Wild, starring Reese Witherspoon as a heroin junkie who sets out to cleanse herself on a thousand-mile hiking trail.

That means three major Canadian filmmakers -- Toronto's Cronenberg and Montreal's Falardeau and Vallee -- will be presenting international productions. (Maps to the Stars is a Canada-Germany co-production set in Los Angeles but filmed in L.A. and Toronto.)

"Canadian talent is obviously on the world stage," Handling said of the trio of celebrated directors.

The closing night gala is going to be actor-director Alan Rickman's A Little Chaos, an historical drama set in the era of French king Louis XIV. Kate Winslet plays a designer invited to design one of the fountains at the elegant Palace of Versailles in the 17th century. Rickman plays the Sun King himself.

Through Handling, Rickman praised TIFF and Toronto: "It is a great privilege for A Little Chaos to have its world premiere in Toronto and for it to be given the festival's closing night gala, but it is also a very personal pleasure. I have filmed in the city, visited often, and some of my closest friends live there. It will be like coming home."

Still, no opening night gala. Most years, it is the first film revealed. Bailey said the delay has nothing to do with the festival's policy that mandates world and North American premieres for the festival's first four days of galas. "Absolutely not," Bailey said, adding that the opening night selection has not been finalized. "We did not want to rush it. We'll be announcing it shortly."

Outsiders are worried that TIFF will lose prominent titles if it enforces its premiere policy. But Handling said in an interview that all festivals fail to land big titles and the TIFF policy will not damage Toronto. "Not any festival in the world gets all the films they go after. So every festival director is used to, sadly, losing films."

As for making the policy public, Handling said, "Everyone's looking for clarity. This doesn't preclude films going to Telluride or other festivals. It just changes the scheduling."

The policy might also mean that some high-profile films that have already made their North American premieres elsewhere can move to later in the TIFF sked, bolstering the second half. That is a world-wide crisis at most major filmfests, which tend to fall off in sex appeal after their opening weekends. "It will help us spread it out," Handling said.